A Text-Book of Vegetable and Animal Physiology, designed for the Use of Schools, Seminaries, and Colleges in the United States. By HENRY GOADBY, M.D., Professor of Vegetable and Animal Physiology and Entomology in the State Agricultural College of Michigan, Fellow of the Linnaean Society of London, etc., etc. Embellished with upwards of four hundred and fifty Illustrations. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 346 and 348, Broadway. 1858.
The name of Mr. Goadby is embalmed in a preservative solution invented by him and known as Goadby's Fluid. Those who have visited the Royal College of Surgeons in London tell us of very exquisite anatomical preparations made by him while employed as Minute Dissector to that institution. We are grateful to Mr. Goadby for consecrating his narrow but sure immortality and his excellent mechanical talent to the service of the New World and especially of the State of Michigan.
It does not follow from this that Mr. Goadby has written a good book on Animal and Vegetable Physiology, nor that he could write such a book. Starting with this proposition, we are candid rather than sanguine as we open the volume. We find that it is not in any true sense a treatise upon Physiology, but chiefly upon the Minute Anatomy of Animals and Vegetables, with some incidental physiological commentaries.
On closer examination, we find it to be the work of a microscopist, and not that of a physiologist or a scholar. Its merits are principally its illustrations, many of which are from original dissections, some of which are very good diagrams, others ordinary, and some—such as the view of the human brain and spinal chord on page 282—wretched. The colored figures are washed with dull tints in a very shabby and negligent way. The text is mainly an account of the objects illustrated in the figures, and will prove interesting to the working microscopist as explaining the observations of a skilful dissector. As a "Text-Book of Physiology for Schools and Colleges," it is of course without value.
English microscopists, if we might judge by this work and that of Mr. Hassall, are not remarkable for scholarship. The showy and in some respects valuable work of the latter gentleman was disgraced by constant repetitions of gross blunders in spelling. Mr. Goadby is not much above his countryman in literary acquirements, if we may judge by his treatment of the names of Schwann and Lieberkuhn, whom he repeatedly calls Schawn and Leiberkuhn, and by the indignity which he offers to the itch-insect by naming it Aearus Scabiæi. It is not necessary to give further examples; but, if the general statement be disputed, we are prepared to speckle the book with corrections until it looks like a sign-board with a charge of small shot in it.
Nothing that we have said must be considered as detracting from Mr. Goadby's proper merits as an industrious and skilful specialist, who is more able with his microscope than with his pen, and more at home with the latter in telling us what he has seen than in writing a general treatise on so vast a subject as Physiology.
Lettres de Silvio Pellico, recueillies et mises en ordre, par M. GUILLAUME STEFANI. Traduites et précédées d'une Introduction, par M. ANTOINE DE LATOUR. Paris: 1857. pp. liii, 493. 8 vo.
Silvio Pellico is one of the most touching ghosts that glide through the chambers of the memory. Even the rod of the pedagogue and the imprisonment of the school-room (for it has been the misfortune of "Le mie Prigioni" to be doomed to serve as a "class-book" to beginners in modern languages) have proved unable to diminish the sympathy felt for the Spielberg prisoner.
This volume will increase his pure fame. It will be read with painful interest. It will do more for Italian independence than all the ravings of revolutionary manifestoes and all the poignard-strokes of political assassins which can be written or given from now till doomsday. No one can read it without a swelling heart and a tear-filled eye, for it discloses involuntarily and indirectly the unspeakable unhappiness of Italy. Here are the sad accounts of some loved friend or admired countryman snatched away to prison, or hurried into exile, for a letter written, or a visit paid, or an intemperate speech uttered; while no preparation is made for the long departure, and papers, even the most familiar and prized, are seized and never restored. Another page presents the exile's struggles for daily bread, his privations, his longings for the Italian sun and sky and soil, for the native land; another, the earnest prayer from jail-walls for the Bible, for books upon our Saviour's sufferings (nothing less than voices from heaven can breathe comfort in Austrian dungeons!) Then the moving letters written from one prisoner's family to another's (yesterday unacquainted, to-day near kinsmen in the bonds of sorrow) to sustain each other in the common afflictions, craving with avidity the least intelligence from the living tombs of tyranny, sharing with generous alacrity all their tidings. How musically endearing Italian diminutives fall upon the ear employed in this office! Here we have Pellico's own letters to his parents to calm their natural grief, filled with pious concealment of his own mental and bodily torment, with encouragements to hope an early pardon, and to turn their eyes to Religion, which never yet refused consolation to the afflicted. We have never read a more distressing letter than he wrote to his family, when, at last pardoned, he was once more free. Seven years had passed away since he heard from them; he knew not if one still lived to welcome him home,—if his kindred had forgotten, or execrated him as one who had dragged their common parents sorrowing and gray-haired down to the grave. Has the world among all its manifold sorrows any sorrow like unto this?
The late M. de Lamennais was wont to speak with contempt of Silvio Pellico, as being a weak, spiritless craven, who accepted with resignation when he should have plotted to end the thraldom of his country. Yet what can a man do, when the classes above him and those below him, when noble and priest and peasant, live contented in the silence of despotism, (calling it peace,) without one thought of other days, without one sentiment of pride in the deeds of their illustrious forefathers? What is a Christian's duty, when his country is bled and plundered and ground down to the dust under the iron heel of military despotism, when the political fabric of his native land is crumbling, and his countrymen are listless, selfish, sensual, unpatriotic, not unhappy so long as their bellies are filled and their backs covered? Shall he lift his streaming eyes to heaven with the resigned ejaculation, "Father, not my will, but thine, be done"? —or shall he, in holy despair, throw his life away on Austrian bayonets? Terrible problem!